A Century of Urban Futures: Archives, Vectors, and Perspectives (1950-2050)

The symposium A Century of Urban Futures: Archives, Vectors, and Perspectives (1950–2050) invites interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners to join us at ETH Zurich for a two-day symposium exploring the shifting narratives, epistemologies, and imaginaries of urban development. Hosted by Philip Ursprung and organized by Eric Häusler, Thomas Hänsli, Agostino Nickl, and Simon Nougué, A Century of Urban Futures will take place on September 10–11, 2025, in the context of the collaborative research project The Archive of the Urban Age. The term Urban Age is often used to describe the present era of global urbanization, as if it were the inevitable outcome of demographic and economic trends. This symposium challenges such deterministic narratives. We propose a counter-history: the Urban Age was not simply a fact, but a project - actively imagined, constructed, and debated since the mid-20th century by architects, planners, policymakers, and scholars alike. From the postwar period onward, this process intersected with the emergence of electronic computing and the Information Age, shaping new urban epistemologies. Today, the rise of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) once again transforms how we produce, organize, and interpret urban knowledge.